On Techdirt, we often complain about lawyers and bad lawyering and bad cases. But there are times when lawyers are helpful, and my one-sentence summary after spending many days trying to understand a viral dispute about [checks notes] some old Star Wars LEGO sets is that a lot of people should have spoken to competent lawyers before doing… whatever the fuck they decided to do here.

If you haven’t been following the Bricks & Minifigs saga, congratulations on your peaceful existence. It’s a genuinely difficult story to track, partly because you have to watch a bunch of long YouTube videos to piece it together, and partly because almost everyone covering it is pushing a specific angle. Just as a point of reference, Bricks & Minifigs is a company that franchises its concept of stores for buying and selling lego blocks and sets — and, yes, minifigs. They have about 300 stores, most of which are franchised.

The basic summary (and some of this is disputed) is that a local Bricks & Minifigs franchise in Keizer, Oregon made an agreement with a guy named Bryan Mansell to sell a very large collection that his father had put together over many years of collectable unopened Star Wars LEGO sets. The intention of the collection had (we are told) always been to pay for college for Bryan’s children. His father, an 83-year-old man, had agreed to have Bryan sell the sets via the Keizer store on consignment. The collection was advertised, including on the store’s Instagram page where they made it clear that it was “one of the largest, most valuable privately held collections of Star Wars LEGO in the world” and that it was about to go on sale.

Later photos in that post detailed that they believed the collection was “worth well over $200,000” and that the entire collection would be sold through the store. The actual value of the legos in question is disputed, but the lowest number I’ve seen is closer to $60k. The entirety of the Instagram post text reads:

Saturday and Sunday, the 11th and 12th of November, the Bricks and Minifigs store in Salem-Kaiser will display one of the largest, most valuable privately held collections of Star WarsTM LEGO in the world. The event will be open to journalists and the public for photos before the collection goes on sale.

In the early 90s, Ed Mansell predicted Star WarsTM LEGO would be a good investment. Over the next 15 years, he purchased approximately $20,000 of Star WarsTM LEGO and preserved them, sealed, in their original boxes. The investment really paid off. The collection is now estimated to be worth well over $200,000. Multiple sets, including the highly prized, incredibly rare Cloud City set, are now worth more than $10,000 each. Some of the individual minifigs are worth more than $1,300 each. The ten-fold increase in the value of Mansell’s collection is a greater return than if Mansell had put the same amount of money into the stock market in a Dow Jones Index Fund.

When Ed Mansell decided it was time to divest, he turned to his son, Bryan Mansell. Bryan knows more about his father’s comic book and baseball card collection but didn’t feel confident in his knowledge of the LEGO secondary market. He saw the sign for the Bricks and Minifigs store while passing by on North River Road, came in, and asked the store owner, Chrystal Law, if she could help. “I told him, even if we couldn’t sell the collection, I would help him figure out how much it was worth because I didn’t want him to get ripped off. And I think that’s why he trusted me,” Law said. The entire collection will be sold through Law’s store, but first they wanted to put it all on display so the public can see it in its entirety.

The collection will be on display in the store’s party room from 10am till 6pm on Saturday, November 11th, and 11am till 6pm on Sunday. The collection will be available for sale immediately, so the best time for pictures will be Saturday morning. The collection will not be stored on-site after hours for security reasons, and after Sunday the sets will be available for purchase but stored elsewhere. Bricks and Minifigs is located at 3670 River Road in Kaiser.

Apparently, over the course of 2024, various parts of the collection were sold off and Mansell would stop by each month to collect his cut of the sales. There is a dispute over how much of the collection was actually sold before everything went off the rails in late 2024.

In November 2024, as you may have heard, Donald Trump was elected. Chrystal’s partner, Ben Gorman, runs a small publishing company called Not A Pipe Publishing, which (among other things) publishes something called the “Antifa Lit Journal.” Gorman felt like publishing such things in the US under a Trump regime might be problematic and looked into moving out of the country. As part of that, Law contacted corporate Bricks & Minifigs about selling or closing their franchise (exactly what she told them is disputed).

This next part is also disputed. Law & Gorman say corporate told them they had a franchisee who was interested in taking over the franchise. Bricks & Minifigs corporate claims that Law had told them she was shuttering the store and that she wasn’t allowed to do that, so they had to rush to reclaim the store. Almost immediately someone associated with Bricks & Minifigs, Brandon Best, showed up at the store, saying he was taking over the store and demanding the keys and that Law leave immediately. There’s also a dispute over whether or not Law & Gorman were in violation of their franchise agreement (Law & Gorman claim that the breach was due to failures by BAM corporate, which had been worked out months prior, and any claim of ongoing breach is misleading).

There’s a bit that is caught on video where Law tells Brandon and someone from the company on the phone that they have a large collection on consignment and that they owe Mansell money, and Bricks and Minifigs corporate tells Law they’ll “take on the consignment liability.”

Law and Gorman push back on Bricks & Minifigs just taking over the store, but are told by a B&M “official” name Ki McAllister (recorded by Gorman) that if they try to fight this, B&M will make their lives difficult: “If we go the legal route, it’s gonna be a very expensive battle for you and it’s not going to be a good position for you guys to get into. There’s not a whole lot of options for you. If you want to go the legal route, it’s just going to be a mess and it’s gonna be expensive for you.” When Gorman pushes back and asks if McAllister spoke “with” or “at” Crystal, McAllister admits he spoke “at” her and then says: “If you fight this, then you’re putting yourself into a whole lot of shit. It sounds like a threat and I can acknowledge that, because in a way it is.“

From there, it appears corporate Bricks & Minifigs transferred the franchise to two of its partners, Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best (the guy who showed up at the store) and they just… basically denied owing Mansell anything at all or even having his legos. Or sometimes they’d admit it and sometimes they wouldn’t. It became messy. Mansell claims that the people he spoke to store gave an almost identical message to him that Ki McAllister gave to Gorman & Law that it would be too expensive for him to go to court to get back what he owes.

Mansell then reached out to YouTubers, some of whom detailed how Bricks & Minifigs appeared to have effectively stolen all these lego sets. But then (according to one of the YouTubers) Bricks & Minifigs threatened to sue them (sense a pattern?) and they took down the videos.

Mansell then contacted another YouTuber named Ben Schneider, who goes by the handle Reckless Ben — best described as a Temu Nathan Fielder. He puts himself in ridiculous situations, goes to equally ridiculous lengths to justify them, and stares blankly into the camera with that specific combination of cluelessness and overconfidence that comes from someone who has talked himself into believing every move he makes is correct.

In this case, that included (not a complete list) trying to get back Mansell’s money and/or remaining legos by going to the store, confronting the employees, confronting the owners (who were difficult to track down), showing up at Bricks & Minifigs corporate, speaking to the CEO, setting up a registered religion in order to run a raffle for the lego sets to try to make this a criminal case to get law enforcement involved (not how any of this works), filing a bunch of small claims cases against the store and the company and the owners of the store, creating a company called We Steal from Old People, setting up a “franchise” structure for We Steal from Old People to use a mirror argument of Bricks & Minifigs that he can’t be held liable for franchisee actions, putting up signs for that store, and much more.

Some of these moves are interesting. Some are genuinely clever. Many are very stupid — particularly agreeing to talk to cops without a lawyer present after being arrested (more on that shortly), and believing that tricking a store employee into signing what she thought was a delivery receipt, but which was actually an unenforceable “contract” against trespassing him, accomplished anything at all. Mostly what all of this does is generate attention, rather than anything legally compelling.

The one potentially legally interesting move in all of this was filing the ten separate small claims cases against the store (I won’t even get into how they were able to structure things to file the ten separate claims even though that’s interesting, because this is freaking long enough, and the details are in some of the videos below). The store refused to show up in the cases, meaning that default judgments were entered in each case. When Schneider went to the store to try to collect, he found that the store had been permanently shuttered the day after the default judgments came down (which looks very, very bad for Bricks & Minifigs and the franchise owners).

The cops get called on Schneider repeatedly through all of this. When he’s in Utah trying to confront both Bricks and Minifigs CEO Ammon McNeff and the supposed franchise owners, Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best. He tries to take Johnson to small claims court and the court tells him he needs to first try to resolve the issue with Johnson, but Johnson (who at one point offers to give Mansell the lego back if Mansell apologizes, but then doesn’t) has blocked Schneider’s phone number and calls the police when he sees Schneider and associates near his house.

At multiple points the police stop cars that Schneider is in (one time after falsely claiming they didn’t stop at a stop sign, even though the dash cam shows they clearly did) and generally appear to be harassing Schneider and his colleagues. In what appears to be a tremendously egregious move, they pull them over and hold them for hours claiming that they believe there are drugs in the car which they search for and are unable to find. Later the cops get a warrant and raid the Airbnb where Schneider and others are staying, arresting them all.

Schneider and some of the others working with him are arrested at various points for stalking and harassment, while Schneider insists he’s just trying to serve Johnson with the papers from the small claims case. There’s also an attempt to claim that the Go Fund Me campaign that Schneider set up at some point violates some law. The whole thing goes off the rails in so many ways.

Schneider also gets access to various bodycam footage, some of which is redacted in places that look sketchy but happens all the time with police body cams. Some of the bodycam footage looks damning against the police (including a couple of admissions that they don’t really think Schneider and his friends have violated the law, even if the police chief later disputes that).

Very stupidly, Schneider and his friends/colleagues repeatedly talk to cops without a lawyer present. This is a very bad thing to do. Multiple people who were arrested later put up their own videos about it, including one (the guy who was arrested for trying to lock his phone when a cop tried to take it), who claims that he’s got a high IQ so was never going to get bested by a cop (this is also a stupid thing to say).

Bricks & Minifigs’ position on all of this appears to be that (1) anything bad that happened was because of the franchise owners and not corporate, both the previous ones and the ones they arranged to take over who appear to be closely associated with corporate Bricks & Minifigs anyway, (2) Law & Gorman violated their franchise agreement in many ways and the takeover of the store was necessary because of that, (3) that Gorman & Law “stole” Mansell’s legos and the new store really didn’t have any, (4) that Gorman & Law weren’t allowed to do consignment deals in the first place (despite evidence to the contrary, including the franchise agreement that lays out that consignment is acceptable), (5) that Ki McAllister is a low level employee and his statements don’t matter (not how it works), (6) that they didn’t know about any consignment deal (clearly untrue given video evidence as well as notifications from both Law and Mansell), (7) that Schneider is only giving a one-sided account (true, but doesn’t deal with many of the factual claims), and (8) that this is all an illegal harassment campaign against them designed to get them to pay out way more money than they owe (if they owe anything at all).

On top of all that we have competing additional civil lawsuits filed in Utah state courts and the various misdemeanor (not felony) charges against Schneider (though he claims he’s also being threatened with felony charges, though as far as I can tell none have been filed yet). Oh and the potential of criminal charges against… someone… in Oregon for the possible theft of Mansell’s collection.

Phew.

Let’s now insert some of the many videos on this. I will say that Bricks & Minifigs corporate (and the replacement franchise owners) come out of this all looking very, very, very sketchy. Ben Schneider comes out of it looking like both a hero for getting a tremendous amount of viral attention to all of this, but also kind of a dumbass for doing a bunch of very stupid things that he thinks helps his cause but don’t, which he could have avoided by… actually talking to a lawyer. Yes, Schneider got a ton of attention on the issue, but also did a ton of things that likely made everything worse for Mansell and himself.

If literally anyone involved had spoken to a lawyer at any point, an awful lot of this mess could have been avoided.

That’s why I’ll start with the most even-handed summary I’ve seen of the whole thing, from the always excellent Lawful Masses with Leonard French, who walks through the legal reality in exhaustive detail. It’s more complicated than any of the other coverage suggests, though yes, Bricks & Minifigs still comes out of it looking like people who took control of collectible legos they had no rights to.

Some of the key points highlighted by French that haven’t made it into most of the other videos I’ve seen:

1. Mansell should have filed a UCC-1 financing statement with the consignment to protect his property (this is genuinely useful information for anyone ever looking to sell things on consignment) but even if he didn’t do that, he’s probably protected by the “merchant exception” related to the Statute of Frauds. This is far beyond my own legal understanding, but is fascinating.
2. Mansell sent a termination letter to the new owners of the franchise, putting them on actual notice that the sets were his.
3. Mansell had a friend go in and purchase one of his sets after he had clearly informed the store not to sell one. As French points out, this is now a pretty clear theft case.
4. Bricks & Minifigs has some ways that they could (potentially successfully) challenge the small claims default judgments against them in Oregon, but the clock is ticking on that, and if they fail to, those judgments could follow them around.

Then as I was finishing up this already incredibly long article, I saw French has released part II, looking at some of the filed lawsuits that I discuss below and coming to similar conclusions that I do (i.e., no one comes out of any of this looking good).

Then there are some of Schneider’s amusing/cringey videos, starting with him talking about the effort to get back the legos. This is the main video that made this go viral and currently has around 3 million views.

He then published a follow up detailing how the police in American Fork treated him and his friends including stopping them multiple times and eventually raiding their AirBNB and arresting them.

And also a short video reading through and reacting to a leaked letter that Bricks & Minifigs corporate sent to their franchisees about how to deal with the controversy.

There is also a short video from Law and Gorman regarding their side of the story.

Then there are the American Fork police who released this bizarre video showing their side of the story, which appears to be set in… I dunno… heaven? John Oliver’s void? The entirely white background is a freaking choice is all I’m saying. So too is the “I’m reading you a bedtime story” tone of voice from police chief in the video.

The police chief also fails to address the weird redactions in the bodycam footage, and the multiple times his cops are caught effectively admitting that Schneider and his crew weren’t actually breaking the law.

Schneider has released a response video using a similar backdrop and highlighting problems and inconsistencies with the claims in the police video.

Then there’s Bricks & Minifigs CEO Ammon McNeff going on a livestream and doing a poor job of defending the company, including saying a few things that won’t do him any favors in court.

Believe it or not, there’s even more in all these videos that I don’t have time to go into, but we’re at almost 3,000 words already and we haven’t gotten to some of the competing lawsuits.

We have discussed the small claims cases (which have mostly ended in default because BAM folks ignored them) but the bigger deal are the competing lawsuits that have been filed in Utah’s state court and have received less direct attention. While it’s one thing to say things on a one-sided YouTube video, what you say in court can be a bit more serious. And we have two competing cases to look at. The first was filed by Law and Gorman and the LLC they had set up to run the Oregon store, and filed in Utah’s Chancery Court back in March.

It adds some useful details to the whole mess, including saying that the only breach they had regarding their franchise agreement with BAM corporate was… because BAM themselves refused to live up to the requirements of the agreement. Apparently Law had simply managed the store before this, but had approached corporate about taking on the franchise, which they agreed to do. But after working out a deal, the company failed to transfer the lease and the bank account over to Law & Gorman, which caused a bunch of problems regarding payments:

Shortly after the sale closed, BAM failed to fulfill its obligations to properly transfer the store’s bank account and assign the store lease to Plaintiffs’ LLC. These were not minor administrative oversights—they were fundamental obligations without which the franchisee could not operate the business. Without control of the bank account, Plaintiffs could not make the automated payments required under the Franchise Agreement. Without the lease in their name, Plaintiffs had no direct relationship with the landlord and no ability to ensure rent was paid. BAM’s failure to complete these transfers was the first material breach of the Franchise Agreement and the proximate cause of every subsequent “default” BAM later cited as grounds for termination.

BAM did not return the bank’s documentation needed to change account ownership, causing the account to be frozen without Plaintiffs’ knowledge. As a result, automated payments for franchise royalties and for the remaining purchase price were not withdrawn as scheduled.

Similarly, because BAM never assigned the store’s lease to BAMF Salem 1, LLC, the landlord’s notices of bounced ACH rent payments went to BAM as the tenant of record—not to Plaintiffs. BAM did not promptly inform Plaintiffs of these issues, effectively concealing the problem until it had compounded. Plaintiffs thus could not pay rent through no fault of their own: the lease was not in their name, the bank account was frozen, and the party responsible for both failures—BAM—kept Plaintiffs in the dark. BAM’s own Director of Operations later confirmed this failure on a recorded call, admitting that “the lease is technically in our name still.”

That is a pretty bad look. Especially given that, in BAM’s own lawsuit, they claim the reason they repossessed the store and handed its franchise to someone else was… the very things that Law & Gorman say they caused. BAM corporate’s massive lawsuit filed against Ben Schneider, Bryan Mansell, and a bunch of folks working with them (and, of course, claiming civil RICO because why not?) claims that they took back Law & Gorman’s franchise because of breaches to the agreement, such as those that Law & Gorman say were BAM’s fault n the first place (oddly, the BAM lawsuit refers to everyone by their first names, rather than last, which would be more typical).

Despite the foregoing plain requirements, Chrystal and Benjamin materially breached their obligations, as required APA payments were not completed, FA royalty payments became delinquent, the lease and various accounts were never properly transferred and lease amounts were unpaid. Chrystal’s outstanding contractual obligations mounted, eventually exceeding an estimated $175,000….

… Based on the foregoing uncured breaches and anticipatory repudiation, BAM, inter alia, issued a written 11/14/24 Notice of Immediate Termination to Salem LLC pursuant to the FA, exercised its priority rights to the collateral in the Security Agreement, pre-scheduled a repossession with Chrystal and repossessed the Salem LLC store on or after 11/14/24 and assumed the lease, as expressly permitted under the FA and APA, including any and all fixtures, inventory and other assets, and credited an estimated $38,000 paltry value thereof as an offset to the unpaid $175,000 debt.

That’s a pretty big factual dispute that the two courts are going to need to dig into.

The BAM lawsuit also claims that they had no notice of Mansell’s consignment, which is plainly bullshit given the video clip that shows up in basically all of the videos above:

Excepting only respecting the foregoing unpaid lease, BAM did so as a bona fide purchaser, without notice of any third party claims or liens of any kind, including Chrystal and Benjamin’s undisclosed and alleged 11/22/23 Consignment Agreement with Brian, referenced infra.

Prior to and at the time of repossession, BAM’s representative, Brandon, conducted an informal and video inventory of the Salem LLC fixtures and inventory. While he did not locate or identify any product that was identified as consigned or not owned by Salem LLC, he concluded that the maximum value of any residual inventory was less than $38,000. Less than $5,000 worth of Star Wars LEGO product could be located and identified in the entire residual Salem LLC onsite inventory.

This is quite a claim to make given the video evidence to the contrary, which had already gone viral by the time this lawsuit was filed last week.

There are other claims in the BAM lawsuit that seem problematic including this:

Bryan showed up later that day and began yelling at personnel and holding up purported consignment paperwork demanding the immediate return thereof or payment of $80,000. Josh interceded and asked to review it and briefly did so and pointed out that neither BAM (nor Josh and Brandon) were a party to this purported arrangement.

Again, taking over the store also meant taking over the consignment liability, which they had already been made aware of and which they admitted they were taking over (as recorded in the security camera video). That they hadn’t personally been a party to the arrangement doesn’t matter, because when they took over the franchise they also took over that agreement.

The complaint then says that Johnson and Best tried to find the alleged sets owned by Mansell but were unable to do so, concluding that they were all gone. This is, obviously, contested by Mansell and others who have pointed to evidence that the sets were still in the store, including Mansell having someone go in and purchase one of the sets after he had demanded them back in a written notification.

The complaint also claims that it was only in late 2025 and early 2026 that Best was able to dig into the old franchise’s accounting system to find details of sales of what were likely many of Mansell’s legos. The complaint argues that it appears most, if not all, were sold by Law prior to the takeover and if Mansell is owed money, it’s from Law and Gorman.

Many months later in the fall of 2025, and only after Baker Salem had entered its 3/27/25 Business and Asset Purchase Agreement, Brandon gained access to Salem LLC’s archived and incomplete POS accounting system, which he discovered identified Star Wars “lot sets” from Star Wars regular “lots” inventory sales. This inventory sale distinction was unclear to Brandon and Josh, and Chrystal had never explained the significance, if any, to anyone, but Brandon much later in 2026 discovered that approximately 367 purchases of lot sets (for an estimated retail value of $46,000) and 336 purchase of lots (for an estimated retail value of $12,600) had occurred after 2023. He still could not, however, confirm the specific products sold (and whether they had been consigned or not).

Then we get the RICO claims. The supposed “conspiracy”:

Upon information and belief, though they had no legitimate legal recourse or evidence upon which to file a claim, Chrystal, Benjamin and Bryan conspired to, inter alia, threaten, intimidate, extort and defraud Plaintiffs anyway possible, as detailed herein, including the formation of an Enterprise to engage in wrongful activities.

As an initial step, Salem LLC caused a 12/24/24 legal demand letter to be sent to BAM, variously alleging it had been damaged based on the termination of its FA, which was a private business matter between Chrystal and Salem LLC. On 1/10/25, BAM responded, denying the allegations and providing support for its termination. Neither Salem LLC, nor Chrystal or Benjamin, thereafter pursued any claim in the letter further with BAM until 1/2/26, when a separate legal demand letter was sent, as discussed infra.

Instead, upon information and belief and in furtherance of such threats, Chrystal, Benjamin and/or Bryan learned of Schneider and communicated with him, whereby they provided information regarding their unsupported claims against Baker Salem and/or BAM, ignoring and excluding Salem LLC and/or Chrystal’s sole obligation regarding any private consignment agreement with Bryan. In connection therewith, they, together with others (i.e., DOES 1-15) conspired to intentionally, maliciously, fraudulently and illegally threaten, extort, harass, profiteer, interfere with and damage Plaintiffs in furtherance of the Enterprise, including based on the unlawful activities described herein.

Upon information and belief, Schneider and the Schneider Group acquired a direct or indirect financial interest in Bryan, Chrystal, Benjamin and/or Salem LLC’s unsupported claims against Plaintiffs, whereby co-Defendants (with Bryan, Chrystal, Benjamin and/or Salem LLC’s assistance and support) organized and established the Enterprise that would launch a campaign of deception, disinformation and destruction intended to cause Plaintiffs injury and damage, to extort a demand of over $200,000, to deceive and manipulate Plaintiffs, to interfere with Plaintiffs economic and family relations, to harass Plaintiffs, to cause private and public nuisances, to trespass and to otherwise engage in a pattern of unlawful activities, as described herein.

They then claim that this “enterprise” engaged in numerous “unlawful activities” in support of the supposed conspiracy:

Commencing after Baker Salem began operations as a new franchisee and continuing to date, Schneider and the Schneider Group (with the support of Bryan and Chrystal) waged a malicious and intentional campaign of extortion and destruction through independent episodes of unlawful activities against Plaintiffs. Such included periodic harassment through phone calls, numerous disruptive store or office visits, repeated instances of trespass, deceptively staged events (i.e., disingenuous coronation, rally, raffle, store front table promotion, a fictitious Lego Club rally, manufactured and frivolous complaints to police, private and public nuisances, threatening phone calls, numerous deceptive live and telephonic impersonations, in person and remote threats (and via proxies), frivolous sham lawsuits (splitting claims in multiple ineffective small claims actions), etc.), issuing the Publications of defamatory and disparaging images and content, all in furtherance of the Enterprise.

The complaint quotes Schneider’s viral video in ways that… Schneider himself made easy for them to quote. The “we have to do something illegal” is not a great line for Schneider and the other defendants in this case. They also highlight this bit, which is also not a great fact for Schneider:

5/21/26 YouTube Video, Minute 12:46 through 14:46 (Schneider attempted extortion and directly threatened Ammon by stating that, “if you just want to give it back now, it’s going to be a lot easier for you guys. You know, I think you guys would prefer the easy way” or “the hard way. I don’t think you guys are really going to like it”. An implied depiction of the threatened violence associated with the “hard way” is an explosion at BAM’s corporate headquarters).

Of course it’s a bit rich for them to complain about the “easy or hard way” complaint when they apparently made similar statements to Law & Gorman as well as Mansell.

Once again, so so so much of all of this could have been avoided if either side had competent lawyers and listened to them.

Johnson and Best also claim that they tried to settle with Mansell and he rejected their offer, which they claim is evidence that “the enterprise” was seeking more than they were legitimately entitled to:

In late 2025 and based on co-Defendants’ ongoing harassment, Brandon and Josh further investigated the Baker Salem store inventory, and though they still could not reliably identify any product that appeared to belong to Bryan, they located a few (approximately 20) Star Wars LEGO sets in a back office lockable cupboard, on which they noticed stickers not previously recognized. As a precaution only, but still without knowledge that Bryan in fact had any right thereto, they directed that such not be sold from Baker Salem’s inventory and remain locked up pending completion of their ongoing investigation and receipt of reliable evidence of ownership and other conditions.

On or about 12/3/25, in a text exchange between Josh and Bryan (deceptively orchestrated by Schneider) and after sustaining incredible business disruption and harm, Josh discussed a possible settlement scenario under economic duress. Purely as an accommodation (and without any legal obligation to do so), Josh discussed a possible settlement scenario to allow Bryan to retrieve the few sets that had been provisionally identified as merely Star Wars related product in the back office (i.e., described above, though not necessarily belonging to Bryan), which as a precautionary matter, Josh had set aside pending receipt of ownership documentation from Bryan. Josh indicated a written apology and other concessions would need to be made and the harassment must stop. Bryan rejected this proposal outright and responded, “Unless you are going to make us whole on the whole Lego collection, I don’t see where we have anything to discuss.” This confirmed the Enterprise’s interest. Referring to the sets he had identified, Josh replied, “We can give you what was left when [presumably Chrystal] left. We can’t and aren’t responsible for what she sold the two years yall were working together. If you want what she left let me know.” Bryan refused this offer. This exchange further evidenced Bryan’s objectives were not about recovering a LEGO collection, but rather about extorting payment for the Enterprise beyond any legitimate claim.

That argument may sound good to the BAM folks, but I’m pretty sure they’re wrong when they claim they’re not responsible for what Law sold prior to them taking over, because (again) when they took over the store they took on any liabilities with the store. And that would be one of them. Also, there appears to be some evidence in the videos that some of the times they offered to return Mansell’s legos and then… didn’t.

Believe it or not, the 5,000+ words I’ve already written here barely scratches the surface.

Strip it all back and the core of this is pretty simple: an 83-year-old man’s carefully assembled lego collection — built over 15 years, meant to fund his grandkids’ college — appears to have been taken (at least in part) by people who calculated that it would cost more to fight them than to walk away. That bet almost paid off. The only reason this became a national story is that Bryan Mansell found someone willing to be very, very extremely online about it.

But “going viral” is not a legal strategy. And Schneider’s willingness to do basically anything for content — including things that are genuinely legally stupid, like talking to cops without a lawyer present, or making statements on camera that now appear in a civil RICO complaint — may have made things considerably worse for Mansell in the long run, even as it made things considerably more uncomfortable for Bricks & Minifigs in the short run. If Schneider had talked to a lawyer before doing half of what he did, he might have accomplished more with less collateral damage.

Though it might not have made such “good content.”

Meanwhile, if Bricks & Minifigs had talked to a lawyer — a good one, not just whoever is filing these complaints — they might have been advised that explicitly threatening people on recorded calls, taking over a store while explicitly acknowledging a consignment liability on video, and then denying that consignment existed in court filings, was not a sequence of events that tends to end well. And that shuttering the store the day after default judgments came down looks, to put it diplomatically, quite bad.

The deeper structural problem here — one that Leonard French articulates better than I can — is that the US legal system has a genuine dead zone around mid-five-figure disputes. Too big for small claims (even with Schneider’s claim splitting exploit), too small to justify the cost of a full civil suit, it’s exactly the range where a well-resourced defendant can make a calculated bet that the other side will run out of money or patience before getting justice. That’s a feature of the system Bricks & Minifigs happened to exploit, but is not unique to them.

The answer to that structural problem shouldn’t be “find a YouTuber willing to go to ridiculous lengths to get attention on this issue.” Though in 2026, that does appear to be working better than most alternatives — at least in the court of public opinion, where the verdict has already come in decisively on the side of Mansell and Schneider. That’s a real problem for Bricks & Minifigs and every one of their ~300 franchisees, regardless of how the legal cases resolve. You don’t get to un-become the lego store that allegedly stole an old man’s retirement collection. That story is going to follow this brand around for a long time.

None of this had to go this way. A competent lawyer on either side, at almost any point in this saga, probably changes the outcome significantly. Instead, both sides made calculated bets — Bricks & Minifigs that the costs of fighting would deter anyone from trying, and Schneider that going maximally viral would substitute for having an actual legal strategy. The first bet nearly worked. The second is still being litigated, in multiple senses of that word.

What are public-sector unions for, exactly? What problem are they supposed to solve? That’s the question I found myself asking earlier this month, when the best-paid railroad workers in America went on strike for three days.

To be clear, I get what the unions understand their purpose to be. It’s to get the best deal for their members. That’s what they’re designed to do, and they do it well.

Salaries at the Long Island Rail Road—a commuter-train system that connects suburban residents to New York City—now average $121,646, which is 50 percent more than the median household income in New York City ($80,483). Work rules entitle engineers to double or even triple pay when they drive different types of trains on the same day or when they deliver a train to the maintenance yard after driving passengers. Last year, more than 300 LIRR workers each earned $100,000 in overtime—in addition to their base pay. Those extra wages in turn inflate their pensions, which they can take at the age of 55 after 30 years of service.

All of this is as good for union members as it is unimaginable for most American workers. But taxpayers and commuters are the ones who pay for those generous compensation packages, and it’s reasonable to wonder whether they are getting a fair deal.

To her credit, Governor Kathy Hochul pushed back on the LIRR unions. But she quickly settled the strike on still-to-be-disclosed terms that will keep in place massive overtime payments, expensive work rules, and bloated pensions. That’s business as usual in blue states and blue cities, where public-sector unions wield fearsome political power.

[Michael Podhorzer: The paradox of the American labor movement]

None of this is inevitable. Strong unions persist because roughly 30 states have passed laws requiring collective bargaining with public workers. If this process advanced the common good, all would be well. But the available research suggests that it doesn’t. To the contrary, unions routinely insist on pay packages and work rules that degrade the efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector.

Our laws aren’t doing a good job, in short, of aligning union incentives with the public interest. That’s a big problem, especially as our most vibrant cities struggle to provide good schools, effective policing, and high-quality transit. Reform is long overdue. Thankfully, it’s also achievable.

For many union members, it’s completely obvious why we have collective-bargaining laws. “The training process for this job is over a year long,” explained one LIRR engineer on the picket line. “It consists of multiple examinations. Some of the written ones are incredibly difficult. We are very qualified. And, you know, frankly we deserve this money.”

We deserve this money. What should the public make of this argument?

In a market economy, compensation isn’t normally keyed to what a worker deserves in the abstract. It’s linked, instead, to what an employer has to pay to attract high-quality workers. An employer that pays too little will find itself with too few workers or workers who are bad at their jobs. An employer that pays too much risks being driven out of business by more cost-conscious rivals.

There’s nothing intrinsically fair about the resulting wage distribution. Because, from an employer’s perspective, the goal isn’t fairness. It’s running a successful business.

In the private sector, unions temper that unfairness by pushing corporate owners to split profits with workers. But private-sector unions can push only so hard: If they insist on compensation packages and work rules that make the business go bust, they could find themselves out of a job.

Matters are different in the public sector. The Long Island Rail Road, for example, is owned and operated by the government, much like public schools and police departments. As a result, the unions representing public workers aren’t constrained by the possibility of corporate bankruptcy. They’re constrained instead by politics.

Which means that politicians have to decide how to compensate government workers. One approach, favored by unions, is to depart from the baseline set by the market and pay workers what they deserve. It’s an appealing idea. Public workers do crucial work and ought to be compensated fairly for it.

The trouble, of course, is that there’s no end to claims about deservingness. Pretty much everyone thinks they’re underpaid and underappreciated. Sometimes they’re right; sometimes they’re not. But I don’t know what a teacher or a cop or a railroad engineer “deserves,” nor does anyone else.

Giving public-sector workers what they think they deserve, moreover, clashes with how everyone else in the economy gets paid. Is it fair for one group to get special consideration just because they happen to work for the government? Especially when taxpayers—working people themselves—are picking up the tab?

During negotiations with the railroad union, Hochul suggested that the answer is no: “Workers deserve to be paid fairly for their work,” she said. “But at the same time, we must be responsible with public funds and the fares paid by Long Island residents.”

That’s the right approach. When the government supplies public services, its goal should be to supply those public services as efficiently as possible—not run a tax-and-transfer system to aid the relatively small number of people lucky enough to be union members.

There is a better argument for public-sector unions, which is that unions have the leverage to demand compensation packages and work rules that are necessary to attract excellent public workers. Here’s Randi Weingarten, the long-standing head of the American Federation of Teachers: “If we want to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, it starts with a fair wage, adequate working conditions, and the resources and support to succeed.”

There’s a lot to this. The public sector, like the private sector, is only as good as its workforce. If unions help attract better teachers and cops, collective bargaining might improve the quality of public services. We should be happy, on this view, that unions are fighting for government workers. We’re all better off as a result.

Except that’s not what the research shows.

Start with schools. Two comprehensive reviews of the available evidence, one from 2025 and one from 2015, find that teachers’ unions reliably increase school spending, especially on salaries for veteran teachers. In general, however, they do not appear to help kids. “Most often,” the 2025 review says, “teachers’ unions have no impact or a slight negative impact on performance.”

Recent experience in Wisconsin is revealing. In 2011, Republicans passed a law, Act 10, that curtailed collective-bargaining rights for teachers. In the immediate aftermath, student outcomes suffered, mainly because of a sharp increase in teacher turnover. But that dip was short-lived.

Since then, a series of studies have suggested that Act 10 has improved student performance. Barbara Biasi, an economics professor at Yale, found that test scores rose when districts ditched seniority-based pay in favor of a more flexible approach. Morgan Foy of the University of Illinois found similar gains in test scores and attendance even in districts that didn’t adopt a flexible pay scale—because, he suspects, teachers worked harder when unions couldn’t protect them from discipline. And E. Jason Baron at Duke has shown that the promise of higher entry-level wages enticed more young Wisconsinites to get a teaching degree, which has improved the talent pool.

Now consider policing. In 2003, sheriffs’ deputies in Florida secured collective-bargaining rights because of an unanticipated court decision. Researchers at the University of Chicago Law School took advantage of that natural experiment by comparing sheriffs’ offices with municipal police departments that were unaffected by the court decision. Collective bargaining, they found, caused a roughly 40 percent increase in violent misconduct in sheriffs’ offices relative to police departments.

That’s the opposite of what you’d expect to see if public-sector unions made public services better. But it’s consistent with the general run of the evidence about policing. One forthcoming study, for example, finds that the extension of collective-bargaining rights significantly increased the number of civilians killed by police, especially nonwhite civilians, and “can explain 14 percent of all non-white civilian deaths by legal intervention between 1959 and 1988.”

To put it mildly, these results are hard to square with the claim that public-sector unions improve the public sector. At least three factors seem to be driving those results.

First, unions often push for job protections that frustrate workplace accountability. In the study of Florida sheriffs’ deputies, for example, collective bargaining appeared to cause a rise in violent misconduct, because of “a reduction in expected sanctions.” In other words, sheriffs’ deputies knew they could get away with it.

Second, unions push to equalize pay among their members based on seniority and credentials, not on quality of performance. That makes recruiting talented young people difficult, and rewarding good workers impossible. The Wisconsin reforms, for example, “led younger and less credentialed teachers to earn more on average, and older, more experienced teachers to earn less.” That’s bad for aging union members, but good for students.

Third, public-sector unions avidly negotiate for compensation in the form of pensions, not wages. But pensions are a poor recruitment tool: Starting wages matter much more to young people than pensions that will be paid out decades down the line. When unions use their power to boost pension payments, they aren’t working to attract talented young people. They’re working to reward their members.

If we want unions that actually improve the quality of public services, we’re going to have to reform our collective-bargaining laws.

[Jonathan Chait: The wrong way to win back the working class]

As matters stand, those laws require state and local governments to negotiate with unions. But they also establish what those unions are entitled to negotiate over—what is “bargainable.” And a very wide range of terms and conditions of employment are typically bargainable. That’s how you get demands for job protections, pay equalization, and hefty pensions.

None of that is graven in stone. The laws could be amended to limit the scope of what’s bargainable. Overtime, pensions, work rules, salary schedules—all of those would be off-limits. Unions would be left to negotiate over the one thing that is most likely to attract high-quality workers: base wages.

In that world, unions would still be powerful. They would still serve as a counterweight to local governments that might try to balance their budgets on the backs of middle-class workers. Their members would still receive job protections under civil-service laws. The unions just wouldn’t be allowed to make demands that frustrate the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective public services.

Reformed collective-bargaining laws would bring what unions want into better alignment with the public interest. Otherwise, we’re left with the LIRR engineer’s argument about what the unions are for: We deserve this money. The engineer may be right about what he deserves. Surely we all deserve better in this fallen world. But it’s no way to run a railroad.

Discourtesy, unprofessionalism, disrespect.

Troopers in a rogue New York State Police unit based in the city routinely blew off their supposed duties of patrolling MTA bridges and tunnels to listen to music, sleep with their girlfriends and, in one notorious case, drive to a strip club in New Jersey, get drunk and get arrested for assault, Streetsblog has learned.

All of the officers were paid for that time — and some, including the trooper who had the rendezvous at his girlfriend’s place, even made overtime.

In other police agencies, officers going full overnight shifts without making any traffic stops — or reporting any interactions with the public — might have aroused suspicion among the top brass. But this unit was staffed by inept supervisors, according to an internal affairs file obtained by Streetsblog: One sergeant was never trained to supervise some patrols; another sergeant was locked out of his computer for months and was unaware even where his officers were supposed to patrol.

The State Police has never publicly acknowledged the many problems its internal affairs unit found in the small city-based bridges and tunnels unit.

It kept eight of the nine troopers who repeatedly neglected their duties on the force despite investigators later identifying almost three dozen shifts — including 16 overtime shifts — in which these state police officers failed to do their jobs.

The eight troopers remain among the highest paid cops in New York State, averaging around $180,000 annually.

“It’s stunning that we have this level of graft and misconduct,” said Cory Morris, an attorney who has sued the State Police over requests for its disciplinary files. “Although, the more it goes on, the less I’m stunned.”

What is Troop NYC?

The State Police, whose 5,000 officers are known for their purple ties, gray Stetsons and blue and yellow vehicles, answers directly to the governor.

Troop NYC was the smallest unit and was typically overshadowed by the massive hulk of the NYPD, the state’s largest police force. But former Gov. Andrew Cuomo changed that in 2016, more than doubling the number of troopers in the city, reportedly to rebuke Mayor Bill De Blasio after reports that some NYPD traffic enforcement was slipping. The New York Times called Cuomo’s deployment “unprecedented” and likely more about “expanding his political footprint than with addressing the needs of law enforcement.”

The bridges and tunnels unit was supposed to do ramped-up toll enforcement as part of the transition to cashless tolling. And for a while, it did: The purple ties wrote more than 15,000 tickets the following six months, up from only around 1,600 the entire previous year. The troopers’ presence was very much felt in neighborhoods such as Red Hook and Long Island City, and city politicians quickly pushed back.

In 2020, after the city banned some forms of restraint, the troopers’ union demanded that the governor remove all state police from New York City on the grounds that the bill “puts an undue burden upon our troopers,” as then-union president Thomas Mungeer put it at the time.

The agency’s current New York City troop contains a federal drug task force, a number of high-level counterterrorism missions — and a small bridges and tunnels unit languishing in relative obscurity, said sources familiar with the state police.

It’s unclear what that troop is even doing on taxpayer time: On a weekly blotter page where state police troop reports their traffic stops, arrests and other interdiction efforts every day, Troop NYC has not disclosed any actions since November 2022 — and neither of those was related to traffic.

Arrested on duty in NJ

Top brass might never have had to confront the small unit’s lawless slacker culture but for Trooper Michael Lin’s night of drinking in New Jersey in August 2024. Instead of serving on a taxpayer-funded overnight DWI patrol in Brooklyn, Lin headed to the Garden State in his personal car. He went to a strip club and was arrested for assault.

Lin and his partner, Trooper Marc Vixama, started work that evening about an hour early. They seemingly wanted to drive up their citation numbers before Lin abandoned his post, and they had no trouble doing so — at least four illegal vehicles passed them in just 50 minutes.

Lin pulled over a driver with a suspended New York license. The driver’s white Buick had a New Jersey license plate for a 2007 Mercedes.

Lin issued six citations and let the driver leave.

Vixama stopped one vehicle with switched plates and two with suspended registrations. He also stopped a car with a fake license plate — an obvious felony.

Vixama issued a number of citations to each driver and let them leave.

In no case did the troopers call for a tow truck, as was required by policy.

Lin then drove back to the station on Wards Island. He parked his department vehicle and picked up his girlfriend in his Mazda with no front plate and a camera-thwarting plastic cover on the back plate. He drove over the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge to New Jersey, evading the toll along the way.

He and his girlfriend drank at a Thai restaurant and then a strip club. They drove to a gas station, where Lin crawled under a bathroom stall to confront his girlfriend.

They continued to argue in Lin’s car. Lin grabbed the woman’s wrists, leaving marks.

She called 911 from a nearby parking lot.

Lin was arrested by local New Jersey cops after showing them his badge. He was booked at the police station, where he urinated in his holding cell to “get the police in trouble.”

Then the local cops in New Jersey called a sergeant with the State Police. That sergeant called another sergeant and word went up the chain: Something had gone wrong on the bridges and tunnels unit’s overnight shift.

That was actually Lin’s second consecutive night abandoning his duties, he would later admit. He had left his post to have sex with someone in a parking lot the previous night.

Lin was not prosecuted in New Jersey after his girlfriend declined to press charges. He texted her while he was under investigation to ask her to lie to the State Police.

“Don’t let them know we talk. They will try to trick you,” he texted her after she was contacted by internal affairs. “Just ignore them until tomorrow. Fuck them.”

Hundreds of unaccountable hours

Lin’s arrest spurred an internal affairs investigation that first drilled into his and Vixama’s conduct.

Lin did not always abandon his overnight and overtime shifts. Sometimes, he simply parked his squad car for a bizarre form of recon.

For instance, Lin told investigators that he spent one shift in a parking lot near the Throgs Neck Bridge.

“How do you fill your time during that five-hour period?” an internal affairs officer asked.

“I don’t, I simply watch the bridge. That’s it,” Lin responded.

“So you stare at the bridge for five hours?” the officer asked.

“Pretty much,” Lin replied.

Vixama told investigators that Lin repeatedly left his post to meet women, but he wouldn’t provide specific dates or times. And then investigators scrutinized Vixama’s work records, where they found two overtime shifts where he was off post the previous week.

The night of Lin’s arrest, Vixama spent about three hours of on-duty time at his girlfriend’s apartment in East Harlem. He left when Lin called from New Jersey. But rather than radioing his supervisor, Vixama met up with a colleague who was also off his post.

That colleague, Trooper German Tyuryayev, admitted to investigators that he also repeatedly failed to meet his patrol partner. Investigators identified four shifts — including one overtime shift — where he did little police work.

In one instance, Tyuryayev described waiting by the Prospect Expressway in Brooklyn.

“From 12 to 5, I just, I just sat there,” he said.

Investigators later found that eight other troopers had failed to meet up with their colleagues or do any police work during their shifts.

One trooper, Evantz Charmant, spent hours of on-duty time in the police station parking lot. He was asked if he conducted any traffic stops during the shift.

“The only thing that I could think of would be while I was leaving my station, like, right in front of it,” Charmant said. “Maybe then I wrote a citation.”

On another night, Charmant and a colleague spent hours in a different parking lot.

“Did you have any interactions with the public at all?” the investigator asked.

“No, I don’t believe we did,” Charmant said.

The investigators soon discovered a potential cause for the unit-wide dereliction of duty: Sgt. Edmond Williams was locked out of his agency computer for 10 weeks leading up to Lin’s arrest.

Harmless mistake? Hardly: Williams’s password was changed while he served a previous suspension for unspecified misconduct. He did ask IT for help once, but he gave up when it never came. He resigned to simply monitoring his troopers over the radio.

The State Police slammed Williams in its report, saying over just two days, he failed to notice that six of his troopers were “outright AWOL” — military-speak for “Absent Without Leave.”

It gave Williams a five-day unpaid suspension. He remains a sergeant in Troop NYC.

Last year, he received $210,000 plus benefits from state taxpayers.

Years before this scandal, Cuomo urged state troopers to uphold the highest level of integrity so that the public could always trust them.

“The relationship between a citizen and their government is a function of the level of trust,” Cuomo said in an address to a graduating class of state troopers in 2012. “There are two types of integrity: there is institutional integrity [and] personal integrity. When you are a state police officer, you are a role model for the community, not only when you have the uniform on, but a 24-hour-a-day obligation. And I expect you to uphold that integrity 24 hours a day.”

‘Decisive’ accountability?

The State Police has not been upholding the integrity that Cuomo preached a decade ago. Last November, a number of senior brass resigned after they were caught using their badges to bring family and friends to exclusive areas of a Long Island golf tournament.

The then-head of internal affairs was one of the officers who resigned.

The State Police continues to be the last big law enforcement agency in the state that has not yet released the bulk of its misconduct files to the public after a 2020 change in state law.

Streetsblog filed a request in 2023 for all recent misconduct records of Troop NYC. That request remains unfulfilled. (The 556 pages of files regarding the bridges and tunnels unit were instead obtained from a county DA’s office.)

“Why is that file, which addresses founded misconduct by a number of state employees, private?” asked Morris, the attorney who sued for other files. “That’s not what the law is supposed to be.”

The media keep pushing for information — and occasionally piercing the purple wall. In February, New York Focus and The New York Times reported on a decade of lax and inconsistent disciplinary punishments by the agency that left some troopers who seemingly committed fireable offenses on the job.

Later, Superintendent Steven James issued a statement.

“No organization of our size is immune to lapses in judgment or conduct,” James wrote. “When any member falls short of the standards we demand, we address it directly. We do not minimize misconduct, and we do not excuse it. Accountability within the New York State Police is not symbolic; it is decisive.”

That “decisive” action seems limited to one man: Michael Lin. The agency fired him in September 2025 after the investigation detailed above; a hearing board had determined that “to permit him to return to duty would send a message that his pattern of misconduct, neglect of duties and responsibilities, desertion and abandonment of his coworkers and rejection of our paramilitary chain-of-command structure would be acceptable.”

All the other officers found to have committed misconduct remain with the State Police. The highest punishment any of them received was Vixama’s 30-day unpaid suspension.

Seven other troopers implicated in the investigation served unpaid suspensions or vacations day penalties of less than seven days. One had a 15-day suspension.

All of them still work for the State Police under Gov. Hochul.

Through a spokesperson, Hochul said she retains her confidence in Superintendent James and that her administration “fully investigates any claims of wrongdoing and will continue to strengthen policies and procedures to ensure the State Police meets the highest ethical and professional standards.”

Streetsblog also sought comment from the eight troopers and two sergeants. None responded. The state police union, the Police Benevolent Association of the New York State Troopers, also declined to comment for this article.

Beau Duffy, a director of public information for the State Police, said the agency conducted a “thorough” disciplinary investigation following Lin’s arrest.

“The actions of these individuals are not reflective of the more than 5,000 sworn members of our agency who serve each day with integrity and professionalism,” Duffy said in a statement to Streetsblog.

He refused to clarify if the State Police took steps to recover money paid to troopers while they abandoned their duties, merely stating that they were “subject to the appropriate disciplinary process.”

He also said that the State Police “made changes to ensure all regulations and accountability are being enforced on overnight shifts in Troop NYC” and that “supervisory lapses … have been corrected.”

In previously confidential internal affairs interviews obtained by Streetsblog, some troopers cast blame on the State Police’s culture, claiming they were expected not to “snitch” on their partner.

But at least one trooper expressed remorse.

“I am sorry for my actions,” one trooper said. “If I could change everything back, I would.”

— Editorial assistance by Sanjana Bhambhani

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s recently redrawn congressional map was unconstitutional. The decision effectively dismantled a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act allowing for the creation of majority-minority districts, in order to ensure that nonwhite voters would be fairly represented in national politics. Since the ruling, elected officials in several southern states have moved to break up predominantly Black voting districts. Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District, for example, which encompasses most of the majority-Black city of Memphis—and has elected a Democratic representative to Congress since 1983—has been reshaped to form three Republican-leaning districts.

The gerrymandering rush has been speedy, calculated, and legal, prompting no shortage of concern from politicians and voters. On Tuesday, the NAACP announced an effort to do something about it. In a press conference, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson urged Black athletes and fans to boycott state-funded universities in the Deep South, in an effort to exploit one of the region’s biggest weaknesses: its passion for college sports. Flanked by members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Johnson said: “No one Black should be on a playing field of institutions that’s living off of our labor and yet in states that are seeking to reinstitute a sharecropping reality.”

Whether or not a boycott could be effective is complicated. Historically, the participation and dominance of Black athletes has helped college football and basketball become billion-dollar businesses. But the financial landscape has radically shifted in recent years; players are now able to monetize their name, image, and likeness, driving huge bargaining wars for their services. Most highly touted players are able to make millions of dollars without even having to think of going pro. Big-time programs in the South have shown that they are willing to spend to have a top program—and asking young athletes to resist the allure of that money will require more than wishful thinking.

In its announcement, the NAACP’s campaign, which is called “Out of Bounds,” laid out a multipart plan asking Black athletes to reconsider playing for elite football and basketball programs such as the University of Alabama, the University of Georgia, Louisiana State University, and Clemson University—schools located in states that have rushed to redraw their congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. For athletes already attending these schools, the NAACP suggested that they consider transferring, or pressure their coaches and athletic directors into taking a public stand against the redistricting efforts. The NAACP also asked that athletes consider attending HBCUs and encourage fellow players “not to let their athletic value be separated from their community’s political power.”

Meanwhile, the CBC established its own hard line by announcing that its members will not support the SCORE Act, a bipartisan bill that would give the NCAA antitrust protections, prohibit college players from being classified as employees (effectively preventing them from collectively bargaining), and allow the organization to create eligibility and compensation guidelines. The bill would essentially shift the balance of power away from players, and back toward the schools. Ahead of the “Out of Bounds” announcement, the SCORE Act was pulled from the House floor voting schedule, perhaps reflecting the changing political situation. “This is an unprecedented moment featuring an unprecedented attack on Black political representation, and therefore it requires an unprecedented response,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said.

College sports have been integrated for a long time, though it wasn’t always this way. Black athletes were welcome at white institutions only once those colleges and universities were humiliated into recruiting them. In 1970, after integrated teams had slowly popped up, the University of Southern California’s football team was scheduled to play the University of Alabama. At the time, USC had 18 Black players on its roster, including at the crucial quarterback and tailback positions—no small thing, in an era when the prevailing stereotype dictated that Black players weren’t smart enough or good-enough leaders to play quarterback.

According to historians, the legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant purposely scheduled the USC game because, although he was ready to embrace integration, the fans were not. USC went on to pummel Alabama 42–21. The lopsided victory signaled to southern schools that they were in danger of being left behind if they didn’t integrate their rosters. In the 2024–25 college season, Black athletes made up 40 percent of football players and 43 percent of men’s basketball players—the two sports that drive the most revenue in college athletics—across Division I.

One only has to look at the average basketball or football roster for a school in the Southeastern Conference (SEC), where most of the powerhouse southern universities play, to understand how dramatically they’d be affected if the Black athletes decided to play elsewhere. During the 2024–25 season, the SEC generated more than $1 billion in revenue. If Black recruits begin to go elsewhere, and teams at SEC schools can’t field elite teams, there’s no question the boycott would drastically affect everyone’s bottom line. The NAACP is hoping that these schools’ win-at-all-costs mentality can be turned against them—enough to persuade them to force state lawmakers into abandoning their redistricting push.

[Read: Democracy is a racial entitlement now]

That works only if the athletes see the value in delaying their own gratification for the greater good. Many of the athletes being recruited by these schools have enough options that boycotting the South isn’t a tremendous sacrifice. Schools in the Big Ten Conference, which is mostly concentrated in the Midwest, can also offer big money. But only so many slots are available at other colleges. And although steering players toward HBCUs is a noble solution, most HBCUs can’t financially compete with the big programs that have nearly unlimited resources, brand-new facilities, and an established pipeline to the pros. In fact, in this year’s NFL draft, not one team drafted a player who attended an HBCU.

Still, college athletes can play a significant role in shifting even the most ingrained attitudes. In 2020, the Mississippi State running back Kylin Hill declared that he would not play for the university unless the state changed its flag, which contained a Confederate emblem. The SEC also threatened to withhold championship events from Mississippi if it kept the flag. The campaign worked, and in 2021, the state adopted a new flag that does not pay tribute to the Confederacy.

The NAACP and the CBC are hoping that athletes and fans channel a similar sense of consciousness. Fans can always watch something else, of course, but some would say it’s unfair to ask young athletes to detour their dreams of playing on the grandest stages in college sports to benefit thousands of people they don’t know.

It’s worth remembering, though, that some of the most prominent civil-rights movements were led by young people. The late John Lewis was just 25 years old when he led hundreds of peaceful protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, in what became known as Bloody Sunday. The marchers were viciously beaten by Alabama state troopers; Lewis suffered a skull fracture and was nearly killed. Securing the Voting Rights Act literally required blood to be shed.

Athletes and fans aren’t being asked to spill blood, but the same underlying truth remains. Progress usually does not come without sacrifice. And across the country, a lot of households are due for a serious conversation.

Sean Duffy took those seven months to film a reality show called "The Great American Road Trip," because of course he did.